Guide to BTRFS install?

[mastablasta]

Thanks for the advice.

There's no room on sda for GRUB to install because the first partition starts at 32k. sdb should have the room for the boot loader without potentially dangerous partition moving.

Does this mean that even ext4 with GRUB on sda is out of the question?

i never tried booting off the second hard drive or explored if the option comes up in BIOS (though i think it should). sdb is an old WD green. i had once bought a similar one thinking it would replace a system drive on another PC and had problems booting from it or even on linux.

my plan is actually to boot into linux then provide a "boot once" shortcut to windows (unfortunately i read that KDE removed this nice feature with version 5). minecraft and a couple of old games should work well in wine, while for the rest they can make a little effort and have some patience for reboot.

[oshunluvr]

Does this mean that even ext4 with GRUB on sda is out of the question?

The use of a particular boot loader, in this case GRUB, and a particular file system, whether btrfs or ext4 or any other, are completely unrelated to each other as long as the boot loader supports the file system. Both btrfs and ext4 are in the list of 36 file systems that grub supports. GRUB, like any other bootloader, needs a place to install. The version of GRUB we use, often known as GRUB2, requires more space than the older version. Old installs of Windows often occupy this space, both with it's own bootloader and data. The answer to the above is, I believe, yes - as it stands right now you likely will not be able to install GRUB to SDA. I explained why briefly before and offered, not only a solution but a great solution, which allows GRUB to be installed without causing damage to your current setup - a win-win. If you do manage to do everything (shrinking and moving partitions, etc), install GRUB to SDA, and then decide to leave Windows only one this computer and remove Linux, you will have an unbootable machine requiring repair Does that seem like a better solution to you?.

The question to be answered is, do you want Linux on this computer or not? If you do, you must begin to take steps to make that happen. We can pontificate all day about what may or may not work, but until you try something, you'll never know what will work or not.

I offered a solution that seemed to me to be the safest for your current data and installation, shortest in setup time time, and provides what I understood as your mission: To install Linux on this machine while still preserving the current Windows installation and data. If I misunderstood your goals, please correct me. If not, I suggest you begin by securing a verified (via the checksums), bootable USB drive with the Linux operating system of choice on it. Then ascertain as to whether or not you can boot to SDB with a simple BIOS change. Then begin with the partitioning steps as I outlined and continue as I described.

Will you have to learn a couple new things and try things you haven't tried before? Yes, most definitely. Will each and every step along the way work as smooth as butter and as advertised? No way to tell. Will you have questions? Highly likely. Will you run into problems? Maybe. That's why you logged in here in the first place. isn't it?

Good luck with whatever decision you make.

[mr_raider]

Thanks for the advice.

Does this mean that even ext4 with GRUB on sda is out of the question?

i never tried booting off the second hard drive or explored if the option comes up in BIOS (though i think it should). sdb is an old WD green. i had once bought a similar one thinking it would replace a system drive on another PC and had problems booting from it or even on linux.

my plan is actually to boot into linux then provide a "boot once" shortcut to windows (unfortunately i read that KDE removed this nice feature with version 5). minecraft and a couple of old games should work well in wine, while for the rest they can make a little effort and have some patience for reboot.

Oshunluvr solution is the most practical solution given your situation. Stage 1 grub and the core image may or may not fit on the 32kb boundary. It depends on several factors, inlcuding your chosen filesystem and your exact partition scheme. You should understand that most PCs from teh Vista era onwards leave enough space at the start of the disk so it's not an issue. XP era PCs have this issue. Period.

You either try oshunluvr solution, or you try to install grub on sda and see what happens.

If you absolutely MUST have a grub on sda, you can create a separate primary boot partition formatted to ext2. This moves part of grub out of the MBR area. The last time I did this (back in 2014) it worked. None of us can test this for you since we do not have XP era installs. I tried it in a virtual machine, and no modern tool (parted or gparted) even allows me to create a sector 63 boundary.

You have to try. If you break it, we will fix it. Don't worry.

Make sure you have a :

1. Linux Live USB (kubuntu)

2. WInXP repair or install disc.